Two cow economics

In an attempt to explain how different government systems work, someone once penned the “two cows” analogy. Although humorous, it effectively communicates important truths in understandable terms. The author is unknown, the origin uncertain, but after reading it you probably agreed that the message is clear. Now the list, which originally included around 15 items, has grown significantly, thanks to contributors from all over the world. Different editions of the list can be found on the Internet and are sent by e-mail everyday to amuse friends and colleagues. The list below is probably the largest collection which shows most of the existing items and includes alternative explanations for many terms.

Anarchism: If you have 2 cows, your neighbor on your left takes one cow, and the one on the right takes the other; while your backyard neighbor takes the milk, the bucket and the stool.Anarchism: You have two cows. The cows decide you have no right to do anything with their milk and leave to form their own society.Anarchism: You have two cows. You steal your neighbor's bull and ignore the government.Anarchism: You have two cows. You keep the cows and steal another one. You ignore the government.Anarchism: You have two cows. Your neighbor hits you over the head with a brick, steals your cows, then shoots them for fun. You later discover that he is a Nazi.Anarchism: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.Anarchistic: You have two cows. The state offers to pasteurize the milk, while keeping some of it. You refuse. The state demands. You hide out with your cows, and are eventually caught. You die defending your c'ow'se, the state audits them.Anarcho-Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Anarchy: You have two cows. They run away.Anarchy — Pure: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to take the cows and kill you.Aristocratism: You have two cows. You sell them and buy a really big one. With a pedigree.Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down your drain. Then it requires you to fill out 14 forms accounting for the missing cow and calculating the potential butterfat content of the milk it poured down the drain as well as testing them for methane emissions. It then fines you for pollution because your drain empties into a new wetland the inspectors 'discovered' while inspecting your paperwork, and bans the keeping of livestock on your land and requires you to sell your cows at low prices to a corporate giant who grazes them on public lands.Bureaucracy: You have two cows. To register them, you fill in 17 forms in triplicate and don't have time to milk them.Bureaucracy: You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots one, and pours the milk down the drain.Bureaucracy — European Union: You have two cows. The EU loses one cow, milks the other and then spills the milk.Bureaucracy — United States: You have two cows. The government takes both, loses one while moving it to a farm in Puerto Rico and forgets to milk the other.Bureaucratic Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. The cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.American Corporate Capitalism: You have two cows that are bloated with toxic steroids like BST. They are set out to graze on privatized public parks, release massive amounts of flatulence that destroys the ozone layer, they die from excess ultraviolet light, and are processed into meat- like products that look great as a result of clever chemistry and unprincipled marketing strategies. You mortgage your artificially devalued farm at high interest rates in order to buy meat, and go to work for the corporation who bought your dead cows. You consume the poisoned material the corporation is marketing and an ensuing terminal illness develops because there is no health care plan to treat you. The corporate management uses your purchase price to acquire THEIR meat from cows raised "naturally" on tree-free rain forest land outside of the country where labor and resources are cheap.Capitalism: You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Capitalism: You have two cows. You milk the cows and sell the milk.American Corporate Capitalism: Both cows are bloated with toxic steroids. They are set out to graze on privatized public parks, release massive amounts of flatulence that destroys the ozone layer, die from excess ultraviolet light, and are processed into meat-like products that look great as a result of clever and unprincipled marketing strategies. When you mortgage your artificially devalued farm at high interest rates in order to buy meat, you consume the poisoned material and develop terminal illnesses because there is no health care plan to treat you. The corporate management uses your purchase price to acquire THEIR meat from cows raised "naturally" on tree-free rain forest land outside of the country where labor and resources are cheap. Clinton's New Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull; take out huge loan on the cow, and ignore both the cow and the loan from that point on; then you try to milk the bull, and blame the Japanese for its lack of production.Capitalism — American: You have two cows. You sell one of them, and buy a bull. The cow and bull have a great love life; you sell the movie rights to Hollywood. Then you go into real estate.Capitalism — American: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull and build a herd of cows.Capitalism — American: You have two cows, but the milkmaid charges too much to milk them. You sell both cows, lay off the milkmaid, and move to Mexico, where you can buy 100 cows and 20 milkmaids with the money and export it back to the States.Capitalism — Pure: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Capitalism — Reaganomics: If you have 2 cows, you sell one and buy a bull; you then sell all the excess milk to the government who in turn ships it to fascist and communist governments.Capitalism — Tiger Economy: You do not have any cows, and world market prices are too high at the moment, but you do have an uncle in the state bureaucracy who can arrange for a merchant bank bridging loan so you can speculate on the gap between the average futures price and the eventual wholesale price of milk on the Singaporean stock exchange, which will provide enough capital to buy into a cartel which has cornered the market on air conditioners for government installations, and which pays kickbacks to your uncle, who together with his cronies then uses his leverage to ensure the overfinancing of the holding company, thus bringing about a crisis of liquidity in the livestock markets, and causing a dramatic fall in the price of cows, which you buy and then lease back in exchange for government securities with an option to purchase. The milk is then used as collateral in the refinancing of…Corporate Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows, then act surprised when it drops dead.Corporate Capitalism: You have two cows -- IN THEORY. But, ACTUALLY, you have shares in a mutual fund that includes a large agribusiness conglomerate which gives you the theoretical equivalent of ownership of two cows. This agribusiness proceeds to invest heavily in a slick "Got Milk?" celebrity campaign while moving aggressively into application of Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), a bioengineered hormone which is injected in the cows every other week to force the cows to produce more milk than their bodies normally would. rBGH is similar, although not identical, to a hormone that the cow naturally produces. Increasing levels of this hormone boosts milk production, causing a number of problems with the milk, among them, raising levels of pus, antibiotics residues and a cancer-accelerating hormone called IGF-1. Your shares rapidly rise in value as you watch your virtual herd grow to four, then eight, and eventually SIXTEEN theoretical cows . . . before the market finally crashes. Some years later you are diagnosed with cancer of the colon, too late, unfortunately, to treat it benignly because your HMO had cut back on screening tests as a cost-saving move in order to meet the high dividend expectations of the very same mutual fund your 401k was invested in. A colonectomy keeps you alive, for the time-being at least, but you have to wear a bag of shit strapped to your leg for the remaining years of your life. Still, at least it's a better quality of life than those factory cows lead . . . Maybe two cows WOULD have been enough . . . Laissez-Faire Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.New World Order Capitalism: You have two cows. A multi-national company invests in them, buys the milk cheaply, and exports it to another country for processing. You have to buy imported yogurt at an inflated price because the dairy industry lobby and the dairy workers union have pushed through protective tariffs.Centralism: You have two cows. And a problem finding them in the middle of the field with 100,000,000 other cows.Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and gives you part of the milk.Communism: You have two cows. The state takes both, and gives you a little milk... once.Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you spoiled milk.Communism: You have two cows. The government takes the cows and gives the milk to the people.Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you the milk.Communism — Cambodian: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.Communism — Chinese: You don't have any cows. The government sets up a joint venture with McDonald's.Communism — Chinese: You have two cows. You take care of them. The government takes all the milk, but you are encouraged to steal some of it back (before someone else does).Communism — Chinese — Mao Style: You have two pigs. The government launches a campaign to convince you to donate them "voluntarily" to provide meat for workers in the city. The government then declares that people don't need pigs to make pork. Quoting the correct phrases from your little red book, you and your neighbors try to create pork from sheer willpower. Your local party leader reports that you have exceeded all expectations. Your neighbors starve.Communism — Cuban: You have two cows. Fidel tells you some undercover CIA agents have infected all of the cows in your region with a foreign disease that kills the cows. You and your family become malnourished. It begins to occur to you that Fidel doesn't know what he is talking about.Communism — Cuban: You no longer have any cows. They sailed to Miami. You still have no milk - but you do have Fidel.Communism — Leninism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.Communism — Pure: You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.Communism — Real World: You share two cows with your neighbours. You and your neighbours bicker about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.Communism — Reality: Technically, everyone ones all the cows and everyone is equal. Unfortunately, if you happen to be in charge of everyone and their cows, you own more of the cows than everyone else because you are more equal than they are. Communism — Russian: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the "free" market.Communism — Soviet: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. Then the government sends you to prison.Communism — Soviet: You have two cows. You count them and realize you have four cows.You drink more Vodka. You count the cows again and realize you have eleventy six cows. You drink even more Vodka. After a while, you realize that eleventy isn't a real number. You count the cows again and have two cows. You open another bottle of Vodka and try to drown the loss of eleventy four cows. Communism — Soviet: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.Communism — Stalinism/Maoism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.Communism — Utopian: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.Marxism-Leninism: The proletarian cows unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie cowherds. The egalitarian democratic cow revolutionary state with the cow party as vanguard disintegrate over time. Marx choked on a veggie-burger before he could explain what happens to the use-value, exchange-value and sign-value of bovine leather.Communism: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk.American Democracy: Politicians promise to give you two cows if you elect them. After you do, they redifine who qualifies for the cows so that only a select group of campaign contributors qualify. Animal rights activists file a class action suit against you, on behalf of the cows, for breach of contract, while the milk price support floor is raised so astronomically that you switch to Coke.Democracy — Pure: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.Democracy — Representative: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.Democracy: You have two cows. A vote is held, and the cows win.Democracy: You have two cows. They outvote you 2-1 to ban all meat and dairy products. You go bankrupt.Democracy — American: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk and then blame Japan while border guards beat up Mexicans sneaking into the country. People are outraged for a week or so and then go back to televised sports where there's no violence.Democracy — American: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.Democracy — American Republic: You have two cows. The government exercises those powers delegated to it by the people, who are sovereign. The majority does not rule because the people and their representatives (elected, appointed and employed) are constrained by various checks and balances, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the three co-equal branches of government, and the 50 state republics (see, e.g., Article IV, section 4). So what the government does with your cows and with the milk from those cows depends on the interaction between the people and the checks and balances mentioned above.Democracy — British: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.American Democrat: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.Christian Democrat: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.Despotism — Modern: You have two cows. The government steals your cows and shoots you, but in interests of pleasing the global community, name you as a "Militant Rebel Insurgent", call their government an "Enlightened Centralized Executive", and ask for UN peacekeeping troops to come and separate the radical seperationist cow-owners from normal people.Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.Enviromentalism: You have two cows. Government regulations require your cows to wear protective headgear so they do not allow bacteria to die and illegalize the killing of parasites by aggravated cows. European Aged Capitalism: You have two cows. You try to get the better third one without the total number of cows owned by you exceed two. Any cow found by any your cow sexually appealing may join your herde. You are constantly in trouble your cows have not enough jobs, while your cows mean they work too hard. The smarter cows from less developed regions replicate themselves, drink your milk and hold you and native-born cows for idiots.European Unionism: You have two goats. The EU declares them to be fruit in order to conform to a rare Belgian custom of making Cow Jam (jam being required to have at least 45% fruit).European Unionism: You have two cows. The EU develops a quota system that "limits the gas emissions from flatulent cows." You sell your carbon allotment, not the milk.Fascism: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.Fascism: You have two cows. You give the milk to the government and the government sells it.Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes one away and presses it into military service.Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes the cows, shoot you and sell the milk to your widow.Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.Fundamentalism: You have two cows. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention cows, and the government confiscates them because they do not exist.Fundamentalism: You have two cows. The government kills you for owning cows, confiscates your cows, and then kills everyone who suggests that the government should be killed for owning cows. Industrialism: You have two cows. You dissect them both and figure out how to build a milk-factory instead.Labor Unionism: You have two cows. They band together with everyone else's cows to form the Cow People's Union, or CPU. They demand higher wages and shorter working hours. You respond by increasing wages and working hours. As your house burns and your windows are smashed in, you realize that your life depends on these cows, and their happiness is part of your survival. You decide to tell that to God. Liberalism: You have two cows. You sell both to the rich. The government then taxes the rich one cow and gives it to the poor.Liberalism: You have two cows. You give away one cow and get the government to give you a new cow. Then you give them both away.Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Libertarianism: You have two cows. You let them do what they want.Libertarianism:Go away. What I do with my cows is none of your business.Luddits: You have two cows. You milk them by hand.Mafia: You have two cows. The Mob kills one, leaves the head under your bedsheets, and makes you pay protection with milk from the other.Militarism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.Monarchy: You have two cows. You give some milk to the King/Queen.Nazism: You have two cows. The government take the cows, shoot you and the least arian cow and take the milk themselves.New Deal: You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and pours the milk down the sink. The government insists there is a giant storage tank where all the milk goes.Plutocracism: You have two cows. Your richer neighbors get to take one of them and the other's milk because they are richer. In rebellion, you become richer and take three of their cows and the fourth's milk. This continues until the cows decide to invent the concept of "Cowmoonism", band together, become richer than everyone, and take everything and its milk. Protectionism: You have two cows. You can't buy a bull from another country.Redistributionism: You have two cows. Everyone should have the same amount of cow. The government takes both cows, cuts them up, and spends more than the cows are worth giving everyone a little piece of cow.Republican: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what? Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbor.Socialism: You have two cows. You give one to your neighbour.Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you a glass of milk. Socialism — Bureaucratic: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.Taliban: You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which is two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. At night when no one is looking, you milk both of them. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital. Taliban: You have two cows. You load them up with explosives and herd them onto your neighbor's property where you blow them up. Your neighbor dies. You starve to death.Taliban:Nobody has anything. The government shoots you in the soccer stadium.Taliban: You have two cows. At first, the government makes them wear burkas, but later shoots them because "they are Hindu religious symbols."Terrorism: You have two cows. You blow them up.Theocracy: You have two cows. You get all the milk. You love God, He loves you.Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.United Nations: You have two cows. France vetoes you from milking them. The United States and Britain veto the cows from milking you. New Zealand abstains.Utopia: If you have 2 cows, Mother Nature zaps the cows, turning their udders into eternal milk-shake dispensers.

American Corporation: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.Arkansas Corporation: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.Australia: You have two cows, and decide to base your economy around them. You find out the best way to milk them, then find out that everyone else is giving away milk for free.Brazilian Corporation: You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.Britain: You have two cows. They are crazy. You try to sell them in Europe.Britain: You have two cows. One has BSE. You get a vet to give the other one the all clear, and then declare there is no problem from BSE in your country.British Corporation: You have two cows. They are mad. They die. Pass the shepherd's pie, please.Canadian Economics: You have 200 cows (2 cows American)Chinese Corporation: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them.Florida Corporation: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best looking one. French Corporation: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.German Corporation: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.Hong Kong Capitalism: You have two cows. You kill them because of bad feng shui.Indian Corporation: You have two cows. You worship them.Israeli Corporation: There are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?Italian Corporation: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.Italian Corporation: You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good. Japanese: There are two cows left in the world. You kill one for scientific research on how to breed them. You conclude that the first one was rather tasty.Japanese Corporation: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.Japanese Corporation: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.Mexican Corporation: You think you have two cows, but you're not sure where they are. You'll look for them tomorrow.New York Corporation: You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas. New Zealand: You have two sheep. Nigerian Democracy: You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots you, and sends the cows to Zurich.Polish Corporation: You have two bulls. Several people are killed while attempting to milk them. Russian Corporation: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.Saudi Arabia: You have two cows. You ignore them because you use your oil money to buy two girls kidnapped off the streets of London.Singaporean Democracy: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.Pragmatism — Swedish: You need two cows. You buy them from IKEA and assemble them yourself (it's cheaper). The Volvo cows don't look as trendy, but they last a lot longer. Swiss Corporation: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge for storing them for others.Zimbabwe: You have two black-and-white cows. You decide that you don't like the white parts, so decide to hack them off with a knife. You then wonder why the cows seem to be dying. You blame the white cow in the next paddock for the whole thing.

Angel Investor: You have two cows. You give one to a start-up. The cow produces no milk. You exercise your exit option and get your cow back. AOL: You buy the two cows many people depend on. Eventually you decide you will not continue them anymore, leaving everyone without milk.Apple: You have two cows. They're translucent! You can see all the guts and stuff. The cows cost more than other cows, but goddamn if they aren't the best-looking cows around.CEO: You think you have two cows. You actually have two sheep, but no one's got the guts to tell you.Computer Science: You have tucows. You can't download anything from them...Copyright Violation: You have two cows. You make copies and sell them to friends for a fraction of the price of a new cow. The milk doesn't taste as good, but at least everyone's GOT MILK.Developer: You have two cows. Your attempts to get them to mate have been unsuccessful. Entrepreneur: You have two cows, you give them each unique names and look for seed money so that you can apply for a patent.Entrepreneur: You have two cows. You develop and launch tucows.com.Fast Company: You have two cows; your press release describes that as an IPO fast track.Fast Company — Typical Dot-Com: You have two cows. A week later you have two thousand cows. A week later you have none.File Sharing: You have two cows. You share clones of them with all the other herders in the pasture. The courts order the pasture closed for violating the copyright laws.Forrester: You have two cows. In 2007 you will have 1,000,000.Microsoft: You buy the rights to two cows. You 'upgrade' them until they're bloated, unproductive and will only survive on MicrosoftFeed. The milk they give can only be drunk from MicrosoftCups. they keep getting a virus and dying.Open Source: You have two cows. You invite other herders to improve your cows. You have two cows that are better than before.Pink Slipper: You have two cows, do you list that as a hobby on your resume?Pink Slipper: You have two cows. Suddenly they become a liability and you're forced to sell them on Ebay to pay your exorbitant rent.Programmer: You have two cows, but you can't find the coffee spigot. You get involved posting to the USENET group alt.cows.coffee.spigots, and the neighbor steals your cows. You want to ask your neighbor to return the cows, but don't know your neighbor's email address. You hack into your neighbor's Tivo and put subliminal messages into all recordings about the benefits of honesty. Neighbor sends cows back, but you don't notice as you're working your way through the neighbor's porn collection. Cows trample you to death. You find that this adversely effects your coding performance, and try to find more coffee.Programmer: You have two cows. One keeps tipping over, yet nobody is pushing it. The other fails to yield any milk, despite being in good health. You spend nearly every waking minute trying to determine what is wrong with your cows and fixing them.Programmer/Developer: You have two cows, you wonder if that will disqualify you for unemployment benefits.Start-Up: You have plans to buy two cows and sell the milk online. You need to get funded & incorporate before the government establishes an interstate sales tax on e-milk.VC: You have two cows. You give them to the entrepreneur.VC: You have two cows, you don't care if the media hype says it's a vertical marketplace for the dairy industry because you've got a stake in a nanotech play that combines bioengineering with cosmetic uses for bovine extract. Also, your cows are way overvalued. But you're too greedy to realize that.VC: You have two cows, you don't care if the media hype says it's a vertical marketplace for the dairy industry because you've got a stake in a nanotech play that combines bioengineering with cosmetic uses for bovine extract.Web Designer: You have two cows. Both of them are in Flash.

ART AND EDUCATION

Art: You hire two cows to model nude. You paint a triangle and do an interpretave dance.Artist — Visual: You have two cows. You stuff them and put them in glass display boxes. In London.Australian Film Industry: Two New Zealand cows star in an award-winning film. They are granted Australian citizenship.Board Of Studies: You have two cowish cows. You evaluate their values in the context of their texts, referring to your own related material and the Stimulus Bucket. You discuss their post-modern re-representation as symbols of a milkless society. Board Of Studies: You have always given students two cows, but you now decide that cows are no longer relevant to today's society. Students now have an option of three goats, four pigs or one and a half aadvarks, but it is compulsorary that they chose the goanna.Board Of Studies: You have two cows. You want your students to be able to speak to the cows. Rather than teach the two cows English, you teach 50,000 students to moo. The students forget English. You are not concerned. Board Of Studies: You have two cows. You order your students to 'read' the cows as 'texts', and to 'compose' a 'response' in praise of the cows. If they do not like the cows, you shoot them. When their parents complain, you conduct an internal inquiry. Conservativism: You have two cows. You freeze the milk and embalm the cows.Conservativism: You have two cows. You lock them up, and charge people to look at them.Counterculture: Wow, dude, there's like… these two cows, man. You have got to have some of this milk.Designer: You have two cows. You move the udders to the side and paint them fluorescent yellow, hoping that will make the milking process more intuitive and fun.Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons and ride a cow.Surrealism: You have two aardvarks. The government paints one green and requires you to take harmonica lessons.